Our Position on CU Night Ride Wills Christensen, Sam Erhart, Jessie Jones, and John T. White
Click the CU Night Ride logo to visit the program's website
CU Night Ride is a program designed to provide safe transportation for students, faculty, and staff of CU Boulder after dark. We believe that this is an excellent program, which provides an essential service to the University community. However, as students obligated to pay student fees every semester it is also our belief that the program is limited in scope and availability, as well as lacking in clarity. Thus, our goal is not to attack or abuse the program in any way, but rather we hope to encourage dialog about the successes of the program and the areas in which it could be improved. It is our hope that this dialog will lead to the expansion of the program or the introduction of a similar but alternative program to accommodate members of the University community when Night Ride is unable to. We believe that the majority of students using Night Ride are seeking a safe way to get home after a night of imbibing. Yet the Night Ride website states that passengers may not be intoxicated. We also believe that terminating Night Ride services before the closure of local bars decreases its usefulness greatly to many students. Also, the fact that the program does not operate on holidays or over University breaks (while understandable) means that there is no comparable service available to students during periods when most are increasingly likely to have need of one.
Another area of concern is the actual accessibility of the program to those who need it. We have heard multiple male students say that Night Ride is only receptive to female passengers. We have also heard stories of groups being rejected by Night Ride even though they had informed the dispatcher that there were multiple people in need of transportation. We believe that all members of the University community deserve equal access to the program, since violence in the community is not limited to unattended females and safe transportation is essential to everyone, whether there is a risk of violence or not.
With all this in mind, we believe that it is time for a broad-based discussion about the program. We do not want to see the program eliminated, but we also do not believe that it is fulfilling its stated goals. We believe that the program should be expanded, or that an alternative should be put in place for students and faculty when current Night Ride services are not available. We believe that to ignore the flaws in the Night Ride program is an abuse of University funds, and that students’ voices must be heard in the consideration of this issue.
Wills Christensen, Sam Erhart, Jessie Jones, and John T. White
CU Night Ride is a program designed to provide safe transportation for students, faculty, and staff of CU Boulder after dark. We believe that this is an excellent program, which provides an essential service to the University community. However, as students obligated to pay student fees every semester it is also our belief that the program is limited in scope and availability, as well as lacking in clarity. Thus, our goal is not to attack or abuse the program in any way, but rather we hope to encourage dialog about the successes of the program and the areas in which it could be improved. It is our hope that this dialog will lead to the expansion of the program or the introduction of a similar but alternative program to accommodate members of the University community when Night Ride is unable to.
We believe that the majority of students using Night Ride are seeking a safe way to get home after a night of imbibing. Yet the Night Ride website states that passengers may not be intoxicated. We also believe that terminating Night Ride services before the closure of local bars decreases its usefulness greatly to many students. Also, the fact that the program does not operate on holidays or over University breaks (while understandable) means that there is no comparable service available to students during periods when most are increasingly likely to have need of one.
Another area of concern is the actual accessibility of the program to those who need it. We have heard multiple male students say that Night Ride is only receptive to female passengers. We have also heard stories of groups being rejected by Night Ride even though they had informed the dispatcher that there were multiple people in need of transportation. We believe that all members of the University community deserve equal access to the program, since violence in the community is not limited to unattended females and safe transportation is essential to everyone, whether there is a risk of violence or not.
With all this in mind, we believe that it is time for a broad-based discussion about the program. We do not want to see the program eliminated, but we also do not believe that it is fulfilling its stated goals. We believe that the program should be expanded, or that an alternative should be put in place for students and faculty when current Night Ride services are not available. We believe that to ignore the flaws in the Night Ride program is an abuse of University funds, and that students’ voices must be heard in the consideration of this issue.
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